Tag: ICP

In Seventh Grade my English Teacher put me at the girls’ table. It wasn’t the only table with girls at it but it was the one with the toughest girls, kind of like The Shangri-Las, and it was definitely the only table with four girls and just one guy. I think it was two white girls who were trying to get into Alternative Rock but also a little sporty and an Asian and Mexican American girl who were both pretty “hood” or “ghetto”. Whenever it got to the time when we were supposed to be working or reading but you can get away with talking as long as it’s low enough that only people at the same table can hear the conversation went straight to boys and periods and sex: girl stuff. One of the girls tilted her head toward me meaningfully but the others were unanimous:

“He doesn’t count!”

I don’t know exactly why I was instantly and instinctively othered. Maybe it was because I was quiet or wore weird thrift store clothes or because I hadn’t tried to flirt or hit on any of them or some other energetic reason that isn’t easy to put into words – I only know that it was the correct decision. I’ve been more or less comfortable at the girls’ table ever since – the bands I was in were with women, my fondest remembered living situations were with female roommates, I’m instantly comfortable gossiping and being catty but bristle at what’s generally called the “bro code”.

I realized young that a lot of the traits that got me bullied in the society of other boys, a love of reading and other indoor activities coupled with an aversion for sports and competitive roughhousing, would probably be more readily accepted if I had been a girl. I’m not trying to downplay the considerable male privilege I’ve enjoyed or the unique and many tribulations faced by adolescent girls. I also can’t pretend I’ve never acted like a creep or perpetuated and reinforced the many types of misogyny present in my communities and society at large. My only point is that “platonic male friend” is a role I click into extremely naturally.

I don’t remember how I started talking to Kim. We had been running into each other at the concerts and art events in the Bridgeport building for Ed Marszewski’s Lumpen magazine: The Co-Prosperity Sphere. She had a bright smile, small frame and a tendency toward classically feminine and sophisticated clothing and makeup. She was really obsessed with a song called Twelve Thirty by The Mamas and the Papas and would sing it to me whenever we would end up outside or somewhere quiet. She wasn’t a great singer. She was like me – emotional and enthusiastic but far from pitch perfect.

I used to live in New York City

Everything there was dark and dirty

Outside my window was a steeple

With a clock that always read twelve thirty

I was impressed with the casual and unashamed perversity of the song’s lyrics. Nothing crazy but it is written from the perspective of an older man leching out on younger female joggers. I had grown up with the music but I hadn’t known much about the Laurel Canyon scene before this point. I started reading more about it and the band’s dark and tragic backstory. I was impressed that she would always sing the entire song without ever seeming to be self conscious about how she sounded or whether it might be boring me. It never was.

Maybe it’s that I don’t go out and drink anymore but it seems like you don’t see people singing to themselves or each other as much anymore. Everybody has headphones. I sang some of it to myself today while walking the dog in a small former train and logging town called McCloud. The streets were nearly empty and thick with snow. I still felt a little out of place.

We were both interested in seeking out new experiences with rare and hard to find psychedelic drugs. There was this guy who considered himself a “shaman” and lived over by the Dvorak pool across from a house that was covered in decorative garden sculptures. I wonder if it’s still there, I couldn’t find an image when I tried to look it up. The guy’s energy was weird and he was pretty creepy with girls but he always had a bunch of entheogens from all over the world and wasn’t shy about using drugs to get people to hang out with him.

He invited me and Kim over late one night after we all had been at the same party and it was ending. When we got a quick moment alone she stared into my eyes and made the following entreaty:

“You have to help me make sure he doesn’t creep out on me!”

We had never talked much but we recognized something in each other and shared a bond. We were going over there for the same reason but she was vulnerable in a way that I wasn’t. We needed to look out for each other.

The shaman guy wanted to smoke what he said was a “DMT analogue”. All of the short acting dissociative psychedelics seem to work in a similar way in that you need to hold down a heroic amount of smoke in a single hit or you aren’t going to reach the threshold dose. I had never been much of a marijuana smoker so I didn’t really have the necessary skill set to accomplish this. I had smoked what I had been told was DMT and Salvia in the past but never enough of it for it to actually do anything.

This time I smoked enough of it.

I saw what looked like a perfectly symmetrical clown or devil face made out of red and orange shifting cartoon flames. It reminded me of characters and art I had seen in passing on albums by The Insane Clown Posse. The flames seemed to surge and flicker as it addressed me:

“come here”

My perspective seemed to zoom in closer to see it brighter and clearer detail but it didn’t actually change in size. Kind of like the trick where they zoom in and dolly out at the same time in old movies so the background falls away from a character. It repeated the command:

“COME HERE!”

Once again it seemed to thicken and focus. The flames were truly dancing and scintillating with light as the command was repeated for a third and final time:

“COME HERE!!”

Floating forward my point of view fell into darkness like the largest drop on a rollercoaster, some sort of vertigo was present – not as discomfort but as the awareness of motion. The phrase “down the rabbit hole” is a bit of a cliche in discussing the effects of perception altering drugs but that’s definitely what it was like.

I found myself in a rapidly rotating cartoon room. Every time it spun around I would see the distinctive white glove, yellow shoe and thin black tail of Disney’s Mickey Mouse as he disappeared through a door that slammed shut behind him. The room was spinning in a way that I never saw more of him than these three features but I instantly knew who he was. There was a tiny touch of the paranoia that comes with not being able to see a person or entity’s face while tripping but it wasn’t much of an issue.

On each rotation the momentum of this character’s sudden passage would upset a vase or potted cactus that looked like it had come from the fictional Coconino County of George Herriman’s Krazy Kat. The plant wasn’t the same every time but it did always move in the same way: spinning slightly outward on its rounded bottom before resolving its torque and momentum and returning to rest. The other features of the room had the same bright colors and playful geometry of the iconic comic strip.

If there were other visions in store for me beyond the perplexing spinning room I would never get the opportunity to find out.

The sound of laughter began to penetrate into this subterranean bunker.

“What is that? Who’s laughing?”

I began to realize that the laughter sounded familiar and distinctly feminine.

“That sounds like my friend Kim. Wasn’t I supposed to be doing something for my friend Kim? I was! I was supposed to be making sure that shaman guy doesn’t try to creep out on her. Wait! I can’t do that from here!”

I found myself back in my regular body where I had collapsed onto my knees after smoking. Kimberly and the shaman were looking at me and laughing, everything appeared to be fine. I was kicking myself, my first and so far only DMT journey had been cut short early because I had ignored one of the fundamental karmic laws of the universe.

“If you wouldn’t go to somebody’s house for the pure enjoyment of talking and hanging out it’s probably not a good idea to go over for free drugs.”

We ran out of the DMT analogue without either of my fellow psychonauts actually managing to achieve the same scale of intoxication. This would have been a great time for Kim and I to leave but the shaman was pulling out all the stops to keep us there. He left the room and returned with some reddish liquid in a glass decanter that had been wrapped with snake skin and leather – a decoction of Ayahuasca and Syrian Rue. I tried to drink some but it tasted a bit like bile and the vomit flavored Harry Potter jelly beans.

I still managed to hold down significantly more than anybody else I was with. After a bit of time the shadows on the wooden floors seemed to be stretching and slowly coming to life. They were deeper than they had been and seemed to be building themselves up for a big reveal like the scene in Ghost when the spirits of the dead reach from the street to drag the antagonist into hell. It never happened – the energy reversed and things started moving back toward the mundane and normal.

I saw Kim off safely and biked home in the until recently rainy night. With the moisture in the air and the lingering effects of the buffet of drugs I had consumed the green and red traffic lights seemed to shine with newfound holy energy. Pulsing against the blackness and refracted light they brought a newfound urgency and relevance to their ancient wisdom concerning when to stop and when to go…

It wouldn’t be the last time I would see the shaman but I ensured our future encounters were parsed in a spiritually safer form of reciprocity: money for drugs. I bought some LSD and Fly Agaric mushrooms and ended up with a little bag of golden power called kratom for the first time. On a raucous night I followed the acid with the red and white berserker caps and convinced a party full of people to drink my urine with cherry coke and whiskey in the hope for a transference of psychedelic effects.

I saw Kim one or two times afterwards. I think she had a party at Heaven Gallery where everyone was encouraged to bring incense and green cubes of florist’s oasis foam were absolutely inundated with it – transforming the air into a riot of curling blue and grey smoke and disparate floral, herbal and wood smells.

I decided to write this piece tonight because I saw that Kim has been having trouble with someone harassing her. I wanted her to know that I’m still at the girls’ table and I’ve still got her back. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that nobody creeps on her.

Cloudy waters cast no reflection

Images of beauty lie there stagnant

Vibrations bounce in no direction

And lie there shattered into fragments